Google sites is an easy and relatively user friendly way to create a website either for your personal use or for your classroom. Below is a document that walks you through the process step by step. Before you embark on your google sites website creation extravaganza, you will need a couple of things:
1) A google account (they are free)
2) Content to put on the webpage (pretty nothing is still nothing)
3) A plan for organizing that content
Creating a Google Account
If you don't have a google account, you'll need to make one before you can use sites. Hopefully at the time we are working on this you have been given a google account by our tech department. If not, you can make your own. Once you create a google account, you will also have access to all the other tools that google provides such as gMail, Calendars, Documents and the like.
While a lot of people who create websites just throw all the information they have up onto the website and then wish their visitors good luck finding things, it pays to have a well organized website. Scot Hanna-Weir has a few opinions on how to organize a website but let's look at a couple of other people's first. We are looking specifically at course website organization first.
Eric's site, especially for a teacher of Web Page Design, has impressively little on it except contact. Each week is it's own page and there is a way to navigate back to previous weeks at the top of the site. If you click on a class name, it takes you to the syllabus and he puts links to worksheets and assignments within the daily plan for each class.
Al's site puts each class on it's own page and then the full calendar of lessons for that class on the page. There is a link back to the site's homepage and also a few links on the side to important pages like the district's home page and the high school page.
Scot's Organization Opinions
Here's what I would do.
1) Use a different page for each class
2) A page for contact information for you
3) A page of links to other interesting things, or a links section for each class
If you can use a navigation bar, it makes moving around your site a lot easier, but if you don't have a lot of separate pages, it isn't necessary. Avoid too much content on one page. If you are finding yourself doing a lot of scrolling, break the text up into subsections and make those separate pages.
1) A google account (they are free)
2) Content to put on the webpage (pretty nothing is still nothing)
3) A plan for organizing that content
Creating a Google Account
If you don't have a google account, you'll need to make one before you can use sites. Hopefully at the time we are working on this you have been given a google account by our tech department. If not, you can make your own. Once you create a google account, you will also have access to all the other tools that google provides such as gMail, Calendars, Documents and the like.Create a google account
Organizing your content on a website
While a lot of people who create websites just throw all the information they have up onto the website and then wish their visitors good luck finding things, it pays to have a well organized website. Scot Hanna-Weir has a few opinions on how to organize a website but let's look at a couple of other people's first. We are looking specifically at course website organization first.Eric Robert's Page All Content, All the Time!
Eric's site, especially for a teacher of Web Page Design, has impressively little on it except contact. Each week is it's own page and there is a way to navigate back to previous weeks at the top of the site. If you click on a class name, it takes you to the syllabus and he puts links to worksheets and assignments within the daily plan for each class.
Al Schmidt's Page A little flashier, but still contented
Al's site puts each class on it's own page and then the full calendar of lessons for that class on the page. There is a link back to the site's homepage and also a few links on the side to important pages like the district's home page and the high school page.
Scot's Organization Opinions
Here's what I would do.1) Use a different page for each class
2) A page for contact information for you
3) A page of links to other interesting things, or a links section for each class
If you can use a navigation bar, it makes moving around your site a lot easier, but if you don't have a lot of separate pages, it isn't necessary. Avoid too much content on one page. If you are finding yourself doing a lot of scrolling, break the text up into subsections and make those separate pages.
Tecumseh Choirs Department website using google sites
Creating your google sites page
Creating a classroom website with google sitesCreate your account and setup your site. Once you have created a new site, meet me back here.